The Importance of Content Marketing
You’ve been working on your brand, and you’ve heard people mention content marketing and you get the idea you should already know what it is, but you’re not sure what it exactly entails or how it might help you. Well then, you’re in the right place, this article is for you.
It’s no secret that traditional forms of marketing have steadily become less effective when it comes to reaching prospects and converting leads into customers. In their stead, content marketing has become a popular method that businesses and brands use to reach and engage their target audience.
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as ‘a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.’
And that’s exactly the difference between content marketing and other marketing efforts that try to sell you something: businesses blast you with information all the time through their advertisements, but it’s rarely relevant or valuable to you. This is exactly what makes content marketing stand out from the hundreds of marketing messages you receive everyday: it’s content that you actually want to read.
Given this, it’s safe to say that good content is the present – and future – of successful marketing.
How do brands do content marketing?
Nowadays, more and more people, especially millennials, turn to digital sources like search engines, social media and blogs to get information. Audiences not only want authentic and useful, but they have come to expect it.
As opposed to product catalogues or other sales collaterals, content marketing extends to a wide range of material like videos, blogs, educational posts, interactive sessions that give your customers relevant information that they cannot get anywhere else. This is what makes your product or service stand out from all of its competition.
So what can content marketing do for your brand?
Becoming a credible authority on topics that are of use to your potential clients makes it more likely that you will reach the right audience. By earning their trust and loyalty this way, you can go on to strengthen your relationships and grow an active, engaged base of customers – all of which is directly linked to increase in sales.
And while giving your customers the information they want is a good reason to take content marketing seriously, it’s not the only thing that makes it so attractive. In addition to expanding your reach, content marketing can help you:
- Educate your leads and prospects about the products and services you offer
- Boost conversions
- Build relationships between your customers and business
- Connect with your audience to show them how your products and services solve their challenges
- Create a sense of community around your brand
According to entrepreneur.com, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing but generates 3x the leads.
That’s not a shocker: people don’t like thousands of promotional messages blocking up their social media and inboxes. They prefer content they can choose to use and access when they actually want to. Afterall, happy customers make happy brands!
So make sure you diversify your channels of communications – move from info heavy blogs and pushy emailers to multiple channels like social media and responsive websites, use videos and infographics smartly, and remember that ebooks and whitepapers remain popular, and when put together can increase your leads even more.
Conversion rates for content marketing are 6x higher than traditional marketing, says LimeLight Digital.
A study showed that more than 60% customers bought a product after reading about it in a blog, and that’s how it can work for your brand too. Sounds incredible? Well, it’s true, and it’s easy to see how: when you see how giving your customers content that they want when they want, they tend to trust you more, making your content marketing plan a success, it’s easy to understand why top brands and marketing agencies around the globe are fast turning to content marketing strategies to guarantee conversions.
At The Uncommons Design, we create strategic digital marketing campaigns through our optimized content marketing that follow a systematic approach allowing us to meet and exceed our client’s expectations. Aside from creating the content strategy, our uncommon team of content specialists and digital experts focus on maximizing the reach of your campaign through SEO, Paid Search, and social media marketing.
So go on, reach out to our team today, let’s give your marketing strategies an uncommon edge!